So Wikileaks has published a ‘treasure trove’ of classified documents on Afghanistan which has got journalists very excited. But what new information has been revealed? Civilian causalities are being under-reported? Pakistan and Iran have been assisting the Taliban? Taliban leaders are being hunted and killed without a trail? Things are generally going badly?

None of this is news and it merely confirms what has already been reported in the past. However, that doesn’t mean that these leaks are insignificant. In fact, they are very significant in the realm of public perceptions.

This document, amongst other things, revealed that the Johnson administration had systematically lied to the US public about the reasons for the Vietnam War and their continued presence in that part of the world. This revelation galvanized the anti-war movement like never before and street protests followed.

Similarly, it is highly probable that this leak could spell the start of the end for the campaign in Afghanistan as far as public support is concerned. The revelations about civilian causalities being under-reported, is perhaps the most damaging of all and almost certainly will have a huge impact on public perceptions.

It will also become a propaganda tool for al-Qaeda and the Taliban recruiters.

Some may point to opinion polls which suggest that the vast majority of Afghans do support the presence of coalition forces in their country.

But that misses the point. Without support from the British and American public this campaign cannot be successful and these leaks will go a long way towards undermining that. The unwinnable war may just have got a bit more unwinnable.

I am horrified by the reaction of the western ruling classes to the leaks . they are only worried about the likelihood of more attacks on the soldiers (from over a dozen Euro countries). UK does not apologise but ‘laments’ the revelations. What does this mean?

Not one western leader will comment on the central point of the leaks: to reveal the huge number of unreported civilian casualties and the callous treatment by the Euro soldiers. To them, Afghans, Pakistanis, any non-Euros are just many worthless insects – a carry-over of the colonial attitude to the natives.
Will any Christian leaders chide the West for its conduct of the war?
And for that matter, will the South Asian governments utter a word of condemnation?

Sure, we must hold ourselves accountable 100 per cent of the time, but when the local Taliban start rounding up people in football grounds I presume that you will see that as all somehow morally superior. Scream, ‘colonialism,’ often enough and anything suddenly has a veneer of acceptability, right?

Moral equivalence is the standard tactic of those caught in the ethical vaccuum.

Hey,MaidMariam – why are you hiding behind these fancy phrases – ‘moral equaivalence’. ‘ethical vacuum’. How do they illuminate your argument? Would you use such terms to talk to the typical Afghan or Karzai himself or even the vacuous Manmohan Singh?
The Third World excel at killing themselves; should westerners join in and add to the atrocities? Haven’t they committed enough pillage, massacres and genocides the world over?
History cannot be forgotten – we need to remind the Christian West of their crimes and instill some sense of guilt and remorse in them – and demand compensation.
Meanwhile I am attending to my underwear, at your request.

Depends on your definition of ‘win’. I never took it to mean the decisive military defeat of the taliban. Afghan opinion polls have consistently showed the people have no appetite for a return of the taliban. The taliban strongholds lie in Pakistan not Afghanistan; and even at their peak the Afghan taliban needed the active input of the ISI.

Broadly the right of afghans to choose their own path, to elect their own leaders and make their own decisions – which may be in disagreement with NATO – is a victory.

The underlying premise seems to be the idea that the taliban will ‘takeover’ afghanistan if NATO leaves. I’d argue that whilst it might make life for the afghan government and ana substantially more difficult it would put afghanistan in a similar position to pakistan – where a punjabi (as opposed to tajik) dominated military is taking on a predominantly pashtun taliban, ethno-nationalist separatists in Baluchistan, and sectarian violence in Sindh.

I.e. if the argument is that Afghanistan ‘will collapse’; then why not Pakistan?

So now they want a way out, the combined forces of nato failed in afghanistan. Their multi billion dollar military machine did not even make a dent apart from the poorest paying with their lives as usual. The western government will never learn, you cannot place a western blueprint and expect people from poor nations to adopt it when they have nothing in common with you in the first place.

How dreadful. It will really disgust the odd minority of people who believe that the NATO should behave like a police force not an army, and simply arrest, rather than fight and kill, their armed enemies.

Meaning that by contrst the majority of people will be quite satisfied to hear that members of the Taliban, an enemy military force with a habit of

a)providing a base for Al Qaeda
b)beheading captives,
c)murdering schoolteachers and burning schools down
d)executing adulterers and homosexuals
e)throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women

are being hunted and killed.

Presumably in WW2 the British shouldn’t have been killing those poor Nazis, either, just arresting them? I notice that during the Battle of Britain Luftwaffe pilots didn’t get a trial before they were shot down. Shameful.

Yeah, only the British killed a lot of Germans as well as Nazis. You know women, kids, innocent men just popping out to buy bananas for the mother-in-law’s banofi pie, people like that. Only the nazis were decent enough to wear uniforms. But these damn ragheads all dress and look the same, so best not leave a trail when we hunt em and kill em…

“But these damn ragheads all dress and look the same, so best not leave a trail when we hunt em and kill em…”

I didn’t say or imply anything like that, I indicated it was stupid to assume that in a war the Taliban should be put on trial rather than killed. They are enemy combatants. Mostly they will tend to be killed in action rather than arrested. That shouldn’t surprise, intrigue or outrage anyone.

Killing the Taliban footsoldiers in large numbers is not a good idea, as they all have extended clans and families, but I can’t see what’s wrong in theory in going after and killing the leadership. It makes perfect military sense. The problem is the drones they use and the innnocent civilians that get killed as well.

Joe90, this sentence of yours is highly dubious, as the people you talk about could be living in England tomorow.

… you cannot place a western blueprint and expect people from poor nations to adopt it when they have nothing in common with you in the first place.

damon
“Killing the Taliban footsoldiers in large numbers is not a good idea, as they all have extended clans and families, but I can’t see what’s wrong in theory in going after and killing the leadership. It makes perfect military sense. The problem is the drones they use and the innnocent civilians that get killed as well.”

Me, are you blah or Munir or whatever his name was?
I think that MPACUK would be better suited to your views. I think that it would have been OK to kill a few top provos yes.

Joe90, I agree that the Afghanistan mission might be doomed to failure – but it’s not just neo-cons who supported it. Sunny himself did, and there were plenty of good reasons for hoping for the best from the NATO stragegy.

They were not the very same people, no matter how often you and other liars repeat the lie. The Taliban began in the 1990s. Their main enemies in Afghanistan have always been those who largely made up the Afghan Mujahideen of the 1980s, i.e. roughly the later Northern Alliance, who are not much better than the Taliban, certainly, but who are still not the Taliban.

In any case you are using a tu quoque fallacy which has nothing to do with today. Even if it WERE true, it would be about as useful as arguing from some kind of moral ‘principle’ that since the British government had appeased Hitler up until September 1939 it was ‘hypocritical’ to fight him thereafter. It is the moral reasoning of the madhouse.

I agree a lot of liberal commentators did support the afghan invasion in the beginning, but they did so because of human rights violations as main reason and the whole 9/11 thing. But with drip drip of reports showing nato forces involved in civilian massacres, torture, rendition flights, etc and recently wikileaks and other sources showing the reality of what was going on a lot of them have changed tune.

it seems premature to say it is an unwinnable war, and I am unsure how this release will really affect things one way or another. All of the juiciest info is at the end of the day raw intelligence which is riddled with questions and caveats.